India NEWS

With ease in restrictions, India saw a rise in fuel demand in September since June. Among all the oil commodities the consumption of diesel, a key link to economic growth, saw a sharp rise of 13.2% since the last few months. Petrol demand also saw an increment by 2.9% and LPG by 5.7% since August.The demand was low in August but with relieving restrictions it might recover in the coming months.

Fugro has secured a fourth consecutive contract from Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to provide integrated survey services. Under the contract, Fugro will provide infield developments on the east and west coasts of India. The contract also includes rig positioning, current profile measurements and wellhead searches. Fugro will carry out the services using multibeam bathymetric, shallow seismic profiling, magnetometry and 2D ultra-high resolution.

FIR has been registered by the CBI against the officials of KS Oils Ltd, a Madhya Pradesh based company in an alleged Rs 938 crore bank loan scam. Searches were conducted on Saturday in Morena and Delhi at the premises of the firm. K S Oils Ltd has manufacturing plants in Morena, Ratlam and Guna in Madhya Pradesh, Kota in Rajasthan and a port-based refinery in Haldia, West Bengal.

At least 31 employees of India’s state-controlled Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) working at a key offshore facility off the country’s west coast have tested positive for Covid-19. These 31 employees had spent 15 days at the facility. They were found positive in the COVID-19 test conducted at a hospital in Mahim. G North ward has reported 6,613 COVID-19 cases so far, of which 1,908 patients are from Mahim.

Saudi Aramco said it’s still working on a deal to buy a $15 billion stake in Reliance Industries Ltd.’s refining and chemicals business, even as lower oil prices forced it to slash investment spending. The deal with Reliance would help Aramco to join the ranks of the top oil refiners and chemical makers. Aramco is already a major supplier of crude to India.

Hindustan Petroleum Corp’s increased profit by 157% to Rs 2,252 crore in the April-June quarter capitalizing on inventory gains and increased marketing margins. The gross refining margin for the quarter was $.04 per barrel compared to $0.75 in the year-ago quarter. Crude prices have more than doubled to $45 a barrel since late April. Product prices too have similarly risen.

PSU refiner BPCL has extended the deadline to submit an expression of interest (EOI) for the third consecutive time till 30th September. Sources speculate that the Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, Rosneft of Russia, Exxon Mobil, and RIL are likely to participate in the bidding process. Due to the ongoing global crisis, India is an attractive investment destination for multinationals.

Indian Oil Corp. has formed an equal joint venture with France’s Total to manufacture and market high-quality bitumen derivatives and specialty products for India’s growing road-building industry. The joint venture will set up manufacturing units across the country and also explore the possibility of catering to other South Asian markets. The joint venture would commence by taking over an existing plant of Total at Jodhpur in Rajasthan.

Crew members of OIL, ONGC, Alert, Schlumberger and other contractors are at the gas well site in Baghjan and the final preparations for placing capping stack is underway, The gas well site in Baghjan witnessed an inferno a month ago. The capping stack was ready and wrapped with a ceramic blanket and ceramic cloths. A team from IIT Guwahati completed data collection for thermal imaging and sound measurement at required areas under the guidance of district officials and the OIL team.

The United States and India signed a preliminary agreement on Friday on cooperating on emergency crude oil reserves, including the possibility of India storing oil in the U.S. emergency stockpile. The United States would like to begin the process of sharing with India the establishment of a SPR and then see how the U.S. SPR, comprised of underground caverns in Texas and Louisiana, could help India store oil there.

India will on Monday get its very own natural gas trading platform that will help discover local market price for gas through transparent demand-supply matching. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will launch the Indian Gas Exchange (IGX) to kickstart natural gas trading, official sources said. IGX is India's first automated national level trading platform to promote and sustain an efficient and robust gas market and foster gas trading in the country.

India’s fuel demand rose by nearly 50% in May as the country eased coronavirus-led restrictions, Oil Ministry data showed on Wednesday, signaling a slow revival of economic activity. Fuel consumption, a proxy for oil demand in Asia’s third-biggest economy, totalled 14.65 million tonnes in May, 47.4% higher than in April but still 23.3% lower than a year earlier, the data from PPAC of the ministry showed..

On May 27, oil and natural gas began to gush out uncontrollably from the Baghjan oil field in Assam’s Tinsukia district in an event known in industry parlance as a blowout. But even as OIL officials and engineers scrambled to contain the leak, a fire broke out on Tuesday afternoon, birthing a towering inferno at the site. Over 2,000 people have been moved to relief camps since the blowout occurred.

A three-member expert team from a Singapore-based emergency management firm on Monday reached Assam's Tinsukia district from where gas is "uncontrollably" flowing out from a well for the past 13 days. State-owned Oil India Limited (OIL) brought the foreign experts to control their gas well blowout at the Baghjan village in Tinsukia, around 550 km east of Guwahati, after natural gas started spewing since May 27.

Following the May 27th blowout at OIL's Baghjan well, the state-run oil major has called top experts from Singapore's Alert Disaster Control to tackle the uncontrolled gas leak from the site. A statement from the firm read, "All safety and security measures are continuously being monitored to protect surrounding villagers and their properties,". The Baghjan blowout is the second in 15 years at an OIL installation.

Oil India Limited (OIL) authorities in Assam’s Tinsukia district shifted 25 families to safety after a natural gas producing well reported a blowout on Wednesday morning. An OIL press statement said that blowout occurred at the Baghjan-5 well at 10.30 am. The well suddenly became very active while the operation was on, the statement added.

Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) announced a new customer-friendly initiative with the launch of cooking gas booking through WhatsApp across the country. WhatsApp booking can be done on BPCL Smartline number — 1800224344 — from the customer’s mobile number registered with the company. BPCL already allows customers to book LPG through other channels like IVRS, missed call, apps, and website among other digital channels apart from its 6,111-strong large distributors.

Indian Oil Corp. is working on an energy transition strategy, which would involve producing hydrogen in a cost-effective way as well as developing technology to combine CNG with hydrogen, its chairman Sanjiv Singh told S&P Global Platts. In addition to refining and fertilizers, hydrogen provides a huge opportunity for the transportation sector, amongst other, but one of the biggest challenges to overcome is to make it commercially viable, he added.